Letter to Cathy on a summer night
by aurochsandangels
Summary: Wuthering Heights,Heathcliff is 16.The night before Cathy's speech to Nelly,he writes his own confession.Hey!Please review!My first try at stream of consciousness Fanfic..Well?Mostly for WH freaks.


I have been looking over my favorite obsession again,Wuthering heights,always easy for me to extract a little fanfiction from that.I've been working too hard everyday to have time for my phantom story,still working on it,but haven't finished the next chapter yet but I wanted to do something.

I had this weird idea that maybe Heathcliff,the night before he ran away wrote a confession of sorts,as a sixteen year old boy,hopelessly in love might do,asking Cathy to run away wit him .Before he has the chance to give the letter to her,of course,Cathy makes her infamous confession to Nelly. Also,for anyone who is as obsessed over this brilliant masterpiece as I am,you know Heathcliff was pretty intelligent,though he played dumb,so its possible he could have penned this piece of eloquence! Again,thanks for reading.

Cathy;

Tonight ,between hours of respite and hours of rage

while I courted,as is my wont the shadows of my prison

so as the fields are laid to waste,by the argent lightening that cleaves the moor,

by desire,swift and and merciless,my soul was torn.

Ten years gone since first I saw you

since first our foreheads met in blissful sleep;

how cruel you were that night ,with the others standing watch

more damming than your brothers blows,your fathers lie,

your servants curses, were your eyes,so like mine,a cold reflection

in an angels face,dispassionate as marble above the dancing flame.

The candle in your hand

The molten tallow flowed through your tender fingers

you never cried. You never cry. never cry.

But when dreamless slumber had claimed them all,

the dead world leaving me to my devices,you sought me out.

_My mother,in the squalid street,fell on her knees,whispered fiercely 'never cry'_

_and that is all I'm left of her._

I dared not speak,I had no words,that you would understand,

one tear ,one cursed tear would finish me

but you pinched me,checked it with your thumb,kissed my smarting cheek

You took me in your room,where the moon lives,sleeping on your pillow

playing on your floor

and since,I have not thought of her.

My wild heart,in time with yours measures out the days

I have no cause to wonder who I am.

Yet I find too often love,I am left,the cold comfort of dreams

A tapestry,worn bare,yet incomplete

I have woven out of every touch,every word

out of the purple heather blooms caught in your hair like brilliant stars.

This silent sea conspires against us

Your hunger for the world,mine for revenge

and the castle in the mountain,the mountain in the sky

is falling fast to ruin,my sweet queen

The glory of our empire turns to sand,Is it my hand,is it yours

Which brings it down?

Days ago it was,when I last wandered there. You came to me

as is your habit of late,fresh from the company of that bloodless fool

Exiled in his enchanted valley,his golden lair.

Still in your hateful finery, lengths of pale blue muslin

Its hem starred with the white thyme flower

from the meadows near the grange,

distractions of lace and ribbons

precious,forgiven only by the vibrant pulse,

the steady rise and fall of life and breath beneath;

You cleared the hill at last,in disarray

the august wind,your sole and faithful paramour,

had claimed you once again,undone your hair with myriad fingers

kissed your face with gold and rose.

I could not move to meet you, I was a ghost,_jealous _of the wind

oh that we were thus,elemental,tumbling, forever over the moor.

I did rise, from the shadow of my brooding rock , for you looked so wild ,dark eyes full of darker clouds

And all my bitterness, my scheming will not withstand

one word of grief from you.

Too swift,before the battle cues could sound,I was restrained,

your arms, a wealth of summer in that fierce embrace

breath, a baptismal of warm thunder ;

We were ..we were_ we were_ ..Forgive if my script,my very words

falter here,Though the lessons from long ago,the books,

the jumble of equations,are not lost,as you might believe,

the poems you brought me in the field,the rhymes we learned together

between my hours of thankless labor

Resonate so passionately ,they presently create an absurd distraction.

We were we were,_together;_

Four years since,the night the black devil parted us,_master_ of the heights

you clung to me that way then,for life

but your arms were like galley irons,pulling us down,I could not get free

you spat curses at him,hell has never heard,

knowing the misery he could inflict, I took the blows

hoping you would let me go,before he killed us both.

Not until we had lost,and I was laid alone for the first time

did I understand,how quick the sting of the whip,the weight of the fist

recedes before the moonlight

filling the empty space where you once lay, and that space

on the edge of the earth,kills my sleep with tortured dreams.

But when the despot had fallen at last,cursing himself into oblivion

I heard the stable door sigh,in a weary chorus, with footsteps

soft as snow across the floor, oh! Most beloved shadow of the night

Heaven and hell were powerless over us.

Laying together on a bed of chaff,hay damp from the rain

your soft hand in my hair,we swore nothing would part us

and nothing,nothing ever will

only you , putting the whole valley between us

leaving me alone in the winter shadows of the mountain

while you torture yourself,making yourself a willful prisoner

in his house,Your smile a mask,your eyes,full of ghosts

your laughter, such anodyne to me,like a tin bell within his stifling walls.

Oh I am sure,he flatters himself,that this is the music of happiness.

While I am swallowed in my wounds,watching the lapwings wheel overhead

left only with the memory,of how soft and still they were in your hand,

my body,my whole being aches

until I must dash my head against the rocks to negate the pain.

Only you can make this torment sweet,when side by side,in the fields

we turn the earth,gather peat and moss,when the house is dead

and you bring me in your room,forgetting we are not children anymore.

I lay on your bed,once ours,and listen to you read

I don't fit anymore,my feet hit the wall

and the pillow smells of the evening heather,faintly of you

a confusion of warm earth and roses,damp feathers,cypress and violet,

poor compensation,when I've known the source.

But,then,as I said,you found me,we met,as we were,me in my dirt

you in your bells and lilies,lace and ribbons,

and you recalled to me,with such ferocity,the promise we made

it's to easy to forget,in the heat of your arms,just who the faithless are.

The world spins too fast,threatening to immolate itself

on the emptiness,the fathomless dark of space.

Without you,I did not exist,but for an aimless spark

with you,I am omnipotent,but in the pain and joy I become

a conflagration,Without your voice,your touch to quell,

I can do naught but destroy,unchecked,and I know,you are the same

and I must watch you day by day,deny your own existence

Leave your soul in the wilderness

and throw the rest away.

If I could hold you fast,pin your little body,as husbands pin their wives

and scientists pin butterflies,would your crazy soul then hearken

come out of the wasteland where you've cast it,back to its destiny?

If just to beat its wings against a tangible oppression.

I would,I could,so easily.We share the same breath,the same atoms

the same dreams,what is one more,to bind us inextricably?

But I choose to repel you that way,to hide in my ignoble disguise

wearing my dirt and my scars as others wear their sins

we are dying,innocent,innocent,while those above us

drunk on wine,festering in idle occupations,lust and envy

burn their eyes out before the fire,though their souls are ever cold

as they bathe in the blood of the lamb.

A great black bird spreads its wings over us

we must fall on our knees beneath its sheltering shadow

and pray for strength,pray for a broad view to a straight and narrow path

pray for clean thoughts,pray for forgiveness ,pray till our knees are bleeding

for nameless indiscretions ,we know nothing of

This stupid bird,hypocrisy,the vilest sin besetting within it,

beats me senseless, my lips won't give one more word of obeisance

If It would ask me to deny you ,condemn you,sacrifice you

All my heaven is laid out before me,in mist and stone,moss and stream

whinstone and lightening,your profile in the lamplight,dreaming awake.

Blow out the flame,come and sit with me in the darkness.

Always,this single thing has been so much,

in the cradle of the night,no beginning,no end, no you ,no me

Just a weight,soft against my arm,the only peace I've ever known.

I have never lain with you, but I know the way you taste,the feel of you

It's in my blood,on my tongue forever with your name

before I ever saw the morning of this life,you were there,

Cathy Cathy! Hear me love,are they right?

My mind,my senses betray me a thousand times a day

the scent of the fields,the fresh turned earth is all around you,in your hair

and I forget my labors there,my grief,

I see the sky, the clouds move in your eyes and tell the hours

I watch the wind spin you in a dance,

You put a ribbon in your hair ,I want to pull it loose

hold the tresses,let them tumble through my fingers

over my eyes like the evening sea

the sea was never so warm though,leaping for the gravid sun

flowing,rolling in its torments of indigo and amethyst

torrents,torrents,rich and dark as the springtime earth

and a thousand times more intoxicating caress my eyes,

pull me down to some fathomless region where nothing matters

nothing but the feel,the taste,the scent

I could lie suspended in this breathless place forever,watching you,

I hold you in my sight until I burn

afraid that if I close my eyes,you will slip away in that brief darkness.

I lay my cards out on the table,in a treacherous game,I play against myself

the stakes are fixed,the words we say,the space between us

but The particulars shift like the moods of the sky,

A yard to sever,or just the worn fabric of our clothes,

the lifeless folds of your gown,or dress,and you,so alive within it.

I want that life,unfettered,I won't deny it anymore,and take mine,take it all

up here,the summer grass is soft as flax,and clover,Ah God!the crush of clover

under my hands,and the feel of you all around

I will baptize every hollow,every rise and every pulse,in green sunshine.

each time you touch me,on my life I swear

we will not throw another night asunder,so touch me again,

come to me like you used to,

with the moon and stars in your hair

And I will undo the laces,let them fall .

Beneath the prison of cloth,we are angels

unrepentant, loved,and loving without shame,without reason

You live under my skin,thrumming with dark music

a thermal current ,my veins flow with mercury

we collide like two lost stars

and change the shape of heaven.

Perhaps time will bring the sky down

draw the raging sea away in clouds of fog

and leave us in our runes,where memories,sepia toned and out of tune

come night after night to torment us

strange companions in our waning years

who give remorseful answers to questions never asked

..But I am half crazy Cathy,and a heretic too if I believe for one day

that this love,mightier than the oak,would suffer its life that way

in a pot on a window,only seeing the sun,never feeling

only hearing the wind,never bending to it.

We kiss,in the forgiving darkness and bloom,forever strong,forever green.

My muse,carries me so far away,I forget

almost everything,I wake to hear your voice,just out of reach

singing an old fairy song,

making of my consciousness, an endless tide.

You are singing to your nephew,the baby in your arms

how peacefully he slumbers to the rhythm of your restless steps

to your voice,so sweet,and raw from the days high winds

and I am envious,he possesses the world,yet does not know it

relinquishes it for horizons we will never see.

Presently I would give my life,all of my lives, if I could be born again

though they be blessed and full of honor,for one minute in his place.

But I am here,and cannot be free,

I come from dreams,of things just beyond the threshold of the heights

my whole life there,this stable where I live,the moors,the marshes

tormented by the tumbling seasons,the mad play of sun and shadows

abysmal night and the blessed dawn,the castle crag of peneston

the cave there where we hid from storms,the kirkyard

where we dared the dead to rise,and envied them,because they had more liberty

and everywhere,you and I you and I you and I.

Some errant nightmare finds me beneath that kirkyard

nothing but the dark eternity of stagnant peat around me,but then

my monstrous heart is quelled,your cheek is frozen next to mine.

Sing,keep singing I must always hear your voice

waking like now,from one hell to another

how did I shatter my hand? In the gloaming my blood runs black.I don't care

The warm rain comes through the broken window into my eyes,

recalling all your kisses,no one sees me smile,I feel no pain

beneath me,the palette groans in sympathy

and the summer thunder answers my soul,and yours,I know,I know.

I hope you find this before that fool comes again

glimmering in the doorway like a guilded worm.

If we could only find one more hour alone,in this house of spies

I would make you see,make you remember who you are

my own life,beguiling,the reflection of the wild green woods of my soul.

I saw so clearly,in the window,the towering window of the grange,

the night you were hurt,they took you away,I climbed back up to see you

and the glass seemed dark ,as the moon dropped behind a cloud,then it rose

and my reflection gave way,dissolving into yours,

dear prisoner in the great cold mansion

I would have shattered the glass to reach you.

But my thoughts were buoyant then,and I knew I could bide my time

the world then was powerless against us

now the minutes fly to fast,the long hours of childhood vanished

Say yes Cathy,just that word,and we will go,together

back to the gypsy roads

beat these devils,and these angels

Laugh at me,but don't refuse me,be always by my side

I am waiting,always waiting

Love eternally

Your Heathcliff


End file.
